


key and world turns

by dongtian (seclusion)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:48:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seclusion/pseuds/dongtian
Summary: Words don’t do shit, but Eren’s hand in his just might be the only thing keeping him together.
Relationships: Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	key and world turns

835/0/0: Eren Jaeger is born. 

Levi knows the streets by now. He’s fought his way left and right and front and back; there’s nothing for him to fear in his territory. If he never wants to experience the body-wracking pain that is inescapable starvation again, he doesn’t have to. In the underground, Levi is as free as a bird, wings spanning the width of dilapidated buildings and walls. 

He doesn’t look up. The upside of their world is the same as the pits where he resides, just polished up with a layer of gloss. Reflective so people can’t see the scorching darkness beneath. But where humans are, there will be filth; Levi knows this, sure as the twist of his body in midair, sure as his feet landing on solid grey stone. It’s only a matter of how well covered up it is. 

Kenny was proof of that. He came from _up there,_ all clean and healthy, nothing like the messy drunks downstairs that did nothing but piss and shit and shout and occasionally kick Levi out of the room so they could spend time with his mother. He’d fed Levi when no one else would, taught Levi how to swing a knife, swindle a man in the blink of an eye and then stab him in the next. He’d saved Levi’s life. 

He’d left though, as easily as all the braindead people stumbling on the cobblestone streets, mother from son, husband from wife, and Levi hadn’t called out after him. Knuckles stinging and adrenaline surging through his veins, he’d watched silently as the only man who’d ever spoken to him like a person drifted off into the crowd, just another bystander. He could shout by then, but he didn’t. Kenny wouldn’t return. And that—made him the same as the rest. Underground was no different than _up there,_ Levi was sure. Where people lived, where people were born into a world that never requested them, filth followed.

So he doesn’t look up, and fights to survive in the world he’s always known. 

  
  
  


842/7/0: Eren Jaeger stares up at the sky. 

Levi meets Furlan. 

  
  
  


843/8/0: Eren Jaeger learns of the sea. 

On an exceedingly rare occasion where Furlan convinces Levi to drink, they sway down the street and meet another rare sight: a girl, leading an entire horse by the reins. She’s covered in dirt from head to toe, but the horse is mostly unsoiled; they conclude that the horse must be stolen. She protests _no, it isn’t_ but it doesn’t matter anyway because a horse in good shape won’t be left in the hands of a lone girl for long. 

They invite her home in a drunken haze. Her name is Isabel, and Furlan giggles and repeats it dozens of times before she knocks him out in a fit of embarrassment. The horse is stolen halfway through the night, but Isabel stays; the three of them become the strongest in the underground. Levi forces Furlan to teach Isabel vertical maneuvering, because Levi’s spent seven months drilling everything he knows into Furlan’s, and he’s not about to spend seven more for someone else. 

He doesn’t need to get involved in brawls for a sweet potato or check his opponent’s card through his white plate anymore. Left and right and front and back, he is strong. 

  
  
  


844/9/0: Eren Jaeger meets Mikasa Ackerman. 

There’s Erwin Smith, and he’s a man lost in his own mind and a man who dreams of something infinitely bigger than Levi’s wings. Through him, Levi finds the stars. Through him, Levi loses Furlan and Isabel. Through him, Levi becomes humanity’s strongest. 

Through him, Levi learns what it means to be free. 

Face in the mud, eating more shit than he has in years. Erwin Smith is not like anyone he’s ever known, not Kenny or Furlan or the man who’d beat seven-year-old Levi so severely he thought he’d lost sight in one eye, only to get shot in the knee by a lazy-eyed soldier patrolling the next week. Not the blurry, half-remembered hand of his sickly mother. He will follow his word. 

  
  
  


845/10/0: Eren Jaeger loses family. 

It’s horrible. They arrive far too late, and the wall is cracked open and Titans lumber around, covered in intestines. Shiganshina District is an unfinished graveyard. The wide blue sky stretches up above them as they slip through, no white marring the perfect canvas. One-third of the population crowds into the next sector, and soon it looks just like the underground. 

When Levi squeezes past a chanting lady clad in florals—just brushing by a boy with haunted eyes and an unending thirst for freedom—to step back into his former home, he finds that it’s gone. There’s been a stampede, probably, and the only person left in the vicinity is a man pinned underneath the rubble. He’s the one who’d slammed his cane over and over into the back of Levi’s head until he saw stars as a child, hurling up bile and water everywhere; Levi lifts the wreckage off of him anyway. 

The man sobs pitifully, spewing thank-yous in his wake. Levi returns up, where he belongs now. 

  
  
  


847/12/0: Eren Jaeger joins the Training Corps. 

The Survey Corps only lose. Levi would follow Erwin to the walls and beyond. 

  
  
  


850/15/1: Eren Jaeger learns that he is special. 

Boot to the cheek, knee to the nose. This is the song Levi’s always known; he performs it easy in front of the rapt audience, ruining Jaeger’s pretty little face. Fifteen and arrogant and entitled beyond belief, so Levi takes a couple teeth out of his skull. Not that he’s the type of person to say _when I was your age,_ since he literally doesn’t know his own age, but the boy’s got demons enough swimming around inside. Levi doesn’t see the need to compound whatever issues he’s got with his own lovely anecdotes. 

The teeth grow back, and Jaeger is eager and honest. He doesn’t exactly follow Levi around, but he keeps popping up at random times, wide-eyed and clutching a cleaning tool. Levi’s prickly remarks bounce right off of his tough, smooth skin, and it’s not long before he earns the trust of his squad. Levi’s, too. 

His squad dies. Something dies in Eren too, and in Levi. They’re all dying, each time they fight, the most alive they’ve ever felt. Each time they see another Titan shambling towards them, each time they shout _dedicate your hearts._

Eren’s got eyes like the sea, Levi thinks one day as Hange theorizes about how one origin of the Titans could be from a huge body of saltwater. He doesn’t know what it looks like, precisely, and his imagination’s too stiff to accommodate an idea as huge as that, but Hange describes it as beautiful, endless blue—so Levi might be seeing a piece of that in Eren’s eyes. 

Levi doesn’t care about Eren, not in the typical way. He doesn’t care when Eren gets beat up, face bruised; hell, half the time he’s the one doing it, and the kid heals fast anyway. He doesn’t care when Eren’s crying his eyes out again, since they’ve all got grief, they’ve all seen the crush of bone. What good does _what’s wrong? Can I help? I’m so sorry you feel this way, it’ll get better, I promise you_ do? When everyone has lost, everyone knows: words do not fill the emptiness of a human-shaped hole. 

Sometimes, though, he puts his hand on Eren’s shoulder, and he’ll stop shaking. The loud sobs stop too, so Levi does it more often. He doesn’t like hearing other people cry. 

Eventually, Eren quits crying. His fire still burns as bright as ever, but the sadness around it has flaked off. Levi still puts his hand on his shoulder, and when Eren leans in and doesn’t say anything when Levi slides a hand underneath his shirt and up, up, up Levi discovers that there is care in there, somewhere. 

  
  
  


850/15/1: Eren Jaeger learns that he is not special. 

Eren is made of his past and shaped by his future, and holds a gift that lies the key to the world. Levi puts his hands all over this key, grips the firm muscles of his back and his bony wrists. Traces his tongue over the line in the neck: ten centimeters down. For a short while, they forget. 

They are not yet free. The citizens they are trying to protect detest them; comrades fall and fall and fall. The heat of skin on skin does not erase their world, but in the quivering torchlight their shadows connect and wipe away some of the filth he’s spent his life trying to escape. 

Erwin dies, and the basement opens, and Levi watches Eren Jaeger turn sixteen with a burden doubled. 

Words don’t do shit, but Eren’s hand in his just might be the only thing keeping him together. 

  
  
  


851/16/2: Eren Jaeger looks over the sea. 

Stepping in the impossible water, cool and kind around his ankles, Levi learns that the sea is just like Eren’s eyes. Sparkling in the sun and carrying an unfathomable depth; a mirage never to be crossed. Watches the strong lines of Eren’s back, facing out to the unknown, he aches for a reason he does not understand. 

They’re free, now. 

Levi splashes through the water and threads their fingers together, looks at the boy he’s come to know over the past two years; saved him time and time again, all for this moment. He does not regret choosing him.

  
  
  


852/17/?: 

What does freedom mean to Eren? They’re free now, aren’t they? The walls no longer limit their space to roam; the sea is not off-limits either. They’ve retaken their humanity. 

Why does Eren look so sad? The melancholy does not disappear when Levi presses bruises into his hips, or makes him herbal tea. He watches the clouds meet the surface of the water, and an image of Erwin, lost in his own mind, echoes behind Levi’s eyes. 

  
  
  


853/18/?:

Does Levi know him?

  
  
  


854/19/0: Eren Jaeger to the world. 

Levi’s going to chase him. Levi’s going to chase him and beat him up and give him a piece of his mind. He’s going to shout _why why why_ like one of those lamenting holier-than-thou officials when they got what they had coming—then, seize his stupid fucking face and headbutt some sense into him. He doesn’t care if Mikasa comes at him with a blade. 

Eren Jaeger to the world, proving that they are indeed devils. 

Levi does not know him. 

**Author's Note:**

> year/age/[ ]


End file.
